By: Jimmy Sweeney

There are two types of group job interviews. The first is one in which a group of interviewers will interview a candidate at the same time. The other kind of group job interview is when one candidate interviews more than one interviewer on the same day. Group interviews are scheduled to allow multiple perspectives on the same candidate. This allows the company to get multiple evaluations, to work together on deciding on a hire, and to add a team member who has been selected by a large group of people who have a stake in his or her success. For the interviewer it means that you have a longer interview day, more chances to make a great impression, and that you must be ready to get into specific details about different topics with each interviewer.

When candidates have a group job interview with more than one interviewer at once, the purpose is to simulate some type of common workplace scenario where an employee has to deal with a similar environment. In a chaotic interview setup like that, it's not likely that the interviewers will get much in the way of useful information from the candidate, but they will get a very good sense of how well he or she can handle pressure, respond to a variety of questions and present himself or herself to the public. In terms of preparing for an interview like this, there's no substitute for a lot of research, predicting the areas of interest to the interviewers, preparing answers that highlight your personal experience in those areas and practicing answering those questions with those answers. It's even worth getting a number of your friends together and conducting a mock group job interview to get that experience, as well.

More Great Group Job Interview Strategies

For group job interviews where the multiple interviewers are staged over time, the chances of getting into in-depth conversations about specific areas is much greater. These interviews typically assign specific topics or areas of interest to each interviewer, and give a template of questions to ask. As a result, you'll be responsible for coming up with more information, but in a less chaotic and confusing environment than the other kind of group interview. You can prepare for these interviews using the same four-step process of research, question prediction, answer preparation and answer practice.
The bad news about group job interviews is that one person's negative assessment might be enough to eliminate you from consideration from the job. So you have to be sure that you don't have any really bad interviews, no matter how tired and confused you might get after multiple interrogations. The good news is that after having run you past a number of evaluators, the company conducting the group job interview usually feels like it has the information it needs to make a hiring decision. Consequently, if you do well on your group job interview, you may well get an offer very quickly.

Keyword: group job interview

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